


through worlds, worlds, worlds

by thegeneralgirl



Category: Bleach
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Fix-It, Heavy Angst, both pre and post 686, my tags make it perfectly clear what pairing this is, so if you decide to post completely irrelevant comments anyways i'm immediately marking you as spam
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-03
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-08-12 17:48:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 3,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7943620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegeneralgirl/pseuds/thegeneralgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thinking he had been abandoned after his last stand against Yhwach, Ichigo tries to move on. Seven years apart; seven years of regrets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

  

Ichigo doesn’t even have time to realize that they’ve won; he barely recovers from the momentum of the last swing before Soul Society disappears, swallowed by a blinding light.

Or maybe it’s him that’s being erased from existence, Ichigo can’t tell, he can’t think straight at all anymore, there’s only a split second of frantic confusion and then a debilitating pain. It feels like something inside of him is ripping itself into pieces, like someone is trying to boil the blood straight out of his veins, gods, he thought he’d known pain but this is different, this is his soul being cleaved straight through—

It stops.

“Kurosaki-kun…?”

He opens his eyes, and Inoue’s blinking down at him, and beyond, there’s the familiar ceiling of Urahara’s shop.

“Inoue…What happened?”  
  
“Kurosaki-kun…Kurosaki-kun, all of our abilities are gone…” 

 

*

 

He loses his powers. All of them.

The moment that Ywhach ceased to exist, the moment that Ichigo ended him, he’d ended himself, too.

The worlds had split and the pathways had closed, and those who were still human were thrown back into the world of the living. Or so Ishida had speculated in the aftermath.

But they’d been wrong about him, because Ichigo had left half of himself behind in the realm of the dead.

  

* 

 

even if i saw you now,

only once,

i would long for you, 

through worlds,

worlds.

_izumi shikibu_

  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A canon-compliant (read: angst-filled) drabble series in which I try to personally make sense of the clusterfuck that is Bleach's last arc. Also, I know Ichigo's chain of fate was cut way back when, but he's still technically more alive than dead, so...(aka if Kubo can ignore all the technicalities of his universe than why the hell can't I). 
> 
> This is xposted from tumblr (this is probably the only case where tumblr will get the updates first) but I've added in certain things that didn't make the cut on the blog for brevity's sake. Think of the ao3 version as the curated final draft. Thanks for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

  

Is it easier, this time, having gone through it once before? Is it easier, now that it is objectively a clean break? **  
**

Urahara is gone, and Yoruichi, and Isshin. Ichigo doesn’t even know if they survived.

His sisters say nothing, and barely a week later he is back in school.

The hands of his human body are smooth, calluses from wielding Zangetsu as absent as the sword itself. There is no use for swords here; no use for any of the things Ichigo learned a world away. No use for substitute badges or nightly patrols or death gods.

His homeroom keeps a single empty seat, but it reminds Ichigo too much of a memorial to the dead. One day, he gets to school hours before it’s set to begin and hauls the entire desk down three flights of stairs to the dumpster behind the building.

None of his classmates dare say a word.

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

 

It’s not about his lack of power, or the unfairness of it all—or maybe it is, maybe it’s about the unfairness, the injustice. Is this what he deserves? Is this the end they deserve after everything—? **  
**

 

*

 

Even now, she colors his world. Memories of her fill the silence when he is alone: familiar jokes and old squabbles and the asphalt in front of his house where she’d bled and stained the road. Moments between them, suspended in his mind.

( _their last goodbye and how she’d looked up at him, at the very last second, her eyes wide and rimmed dark as if with bruises, with tears, with a single truth, how he should have reached out a hand and never let go, no matter how impossible_ )

There are still stark reminders of her everywhere, because the first time this had happened, even as he’d sulked and tried to move forward, he’d kept the linens in her closet unchanged, had hidden her drawings in a neat stack in the back of a drawer, and kept all of her coded notes; a secret hope. Now they’re nothing but burdens, anchored only by a terrible longing and his own resentment.

 

*

 

And because Ichigo is barely eighteen and much too bitter, he decides that if the gods want him to be human, if some higher power wants to rip the _shinigami_ out of him, then he will do them one better.

He cleans out his closet, burns the pictures, rips up the notes. He throws himself into his schoolwork and part time jobs because there is nobody else to support his sisters now, and he knows he’ll have to take over the clinic.

He runs himself into exhaustion every night, so he doesn’t dream. He flings the useless badge into the river and looks the other way when the swallowtail butterflies visit Karakura as they do every spring.

And one day, after months and months of this lingering pang of pain in his chest, Ichigo tells Inoue to wait for him after school.

“Inoue,” he says, “Orihime.”


	4. Chapter 4

 

The years pass, ordinary and inexplicable. Ichigo looks at this woman in his life sometimes and tells himself that this is exactly what he’d needed all along. He smiles at Inoue and he thinks _this is what i wanted, no doubt, no doubt,_ because how could anybody have deserted him if he’d chosen this life of his own free will? **  
**

*

 

Then one day:

He’s standing outside the clinic, watching as the sun soaks the streets in red.

“Ichigo.”

 

*

 

His spiritual powers slam back into place like a vice. Like a sword. Like her eyes looking into his across a great distance. Like home.

 

*

"Rukia."

 

*

 

i used up this body

longing

for one who does not come.

a deep valley, now,

what once was my heart.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Izumi Shikibu again (recently got a copy of The Ink Dark Moon so I've been on a kick).


	5. Chapter 5

 

Everything important about her is unchanged, and Ichigo’s surprised by how much he remembers despite how hard he’d tried to forget. **  
**

“Your hair is longer.”

They’re sitting on the riverbank, and he hardly knows how they got here. The others—Orihime—must know now, if their powers have also been restored, but there had been no room for anyone else when Rukia had stood so close.

“Yours is shorter.”

She sits carefully, her legs tucked neatly under her, her hands crossed primly in her lap. Like she’s trying to find her place in this world again.

Ichigo knows he’s watching her much too closely, but he can’t be bothered to care. They’re sitting so near each other that his knee almost touches the edge of her hip, the warmth between them driving him to distraction. His whole body is buzzing, but Ichigo doesn’t know if it’s with shock or fury or the relief of having Rukia beside him again.

She smiles a little, small and sad, and finally turns from the Karakura skyline to look at him. “I watched Kazui grow up, you know.”

Her eyes are a deep plum, a dark blue, and Ichigo sinks, and sinks, and sinks.

 


	6. Chapter 6

 

“I tried…we’ve been trying for years, Ichigo, to fix what happened. We could watch you, but we couldn’t communicate, couldn’t manifest,” she takes a deep breath, “I am…sorry. I am sorry that it took so long.” **  
**

 

*

 

There’s a brush of another familiar reiatsu, and Rukia looks behind him, waving a hand in greeting, “Ichigo. Look.”

He does, and it’s Isshin, face grim but no older. With a start, Ichigo realizes that one day, he might surpass his father in age.

When he looks back, she’s already gone.

 

*

 

“Son.” Isshin stares down at the boy in the grass, still seventeen to him even though he’d watched him grow up from afar. Ichigo’s shoulders are hunched, drawn inwards and away from him. There’s a flash of naked hurt, and then the vulnerability disappears as Ichigo straightens and stands, looking his father in the eye. 

_Look, Masaki, he finally caught up._

“Old man.”

 _Son_ , Isshin had called him, but the older shinigami knows that blood means little when it comes to family. He doesn’t look for forgiveness, but he hopes Ichigo will one day understand.

“Let’s go, Urahara's back at the shoten. He'll explain everything.”

Ichigo hesitates, and Isshin thinks that he might refuse after all. “Rukia-chan will be there.”

When Isshin turns to leave, his wayward son follows.

 


	7. Chapter 7

 

Orihime holds Kazui in her lap, and tries to smile. Her son sits quietly,  taking in every detail of the dusty shop that had sat abandoned near their house for so long. So intent for a small child.

After the stillness of the past seven years, the abundance of spiritual energy in the room puts her on edge. Neither Uryuu-kun nor Sado-kun could make it, but they had both phoned her the moment they’d realized what had happened.

Urahara-san, looking no different than she’d last seen him so long ago, leans across the table separating them and makes a silly face. Kazui is delighted, his chubby cheeks ballooning as his mouth splits into a toothy grin, but her baby boy still doesn’t make a single sound. So quiet, always so serious.

Orihime worries, but Ichigo’d always been quick to dismiss her concerns; _I was a quiet kid too_ , he’d say, or _it’s just a phase_. She isn’t so sure.

“Who knew Kurosaki could make such a cute kid?”   
  
“Don’t be rude, Urahara,” Kuchiki-san rolls her eyes at the hat-wearing man, but she is all smiles when she turns to Orihime, “Kazui-chan obviously got his good looks from his mother.”

“Ahaha, Yuzu actually says that he’s the spitting image of his dad…” Orihime trails off in silence, her hands nervously smoothing the fabric of Kazui’s shirt over and over again in the absence of anything else to do. Uryuu had made it for the six year old only a few weeks earlier, decorating it with happy ducks—Kazui’s favorite animal.

Orihime is—Orihime hadn’t known she’d been missing a part of herself until she’d felt the _weight_ of her hairpins return. But she isn’t seventeen anymore, and she can’t pretend that with the relief of having all the vital pieces of herself again that there hadn’t been a stab of apprehension, too.

Because if her powers had returned…

Her husband’s would have, too.

Orihime had rushed to find Ichigo the moment it’d happened, had made it halfway through the clinic before she’d registered the wave of familiar reiatsu, and then seen her husband staring at Kuchiki Rukia—beautiful and shining and for all intents and purposes unchanged—like she’d remade the world.

Almost a decade of time spent together, of vows exchanged and a home shared and a life made, and still, _still…_

Orihime squeezes her eyes shut and concentrates on her son’s warmth.

 


	8. Chapter 8

 

Like the sticky grip of a dream that he’s had too many times to count, Ichigo can’t seem to shake the surrealism of the day from his shoulders.

He’d followed Isshin to the shoten, which had been boarded up only the night before, sat across from people that he’d thought were out of reach for forever, and struggled to separate himself: the Ichigo who had been and the Ichigo that he is supposed to be now.

Orihime’s warmth by his side had been an odd thing, and when he’d glanced down at Kazui he’d almost expected to see somebody else’s son.

( _Why_ _courage_? Orihime had asked when she’d pressed him for a name. Ichigo had shrugged, because the truth would have hurt too much.)

_I watched Kazui grow up, you know._

In the haze, the only thing that’d rung true were her words, over and over again, like the clear chimes of a bell.

 

*

 

He steals away the moment there is a lull in serious conversation, leaving Isshin to coo over his grandson.

Now, taking in great gasping gulps of the cool night air, Ichigo wonders how this is his life, how over twenty-five hundred days have gone by in the slow blink of an eye.

The door behind him creaks open, and even without recognizing the reiatsu, he would know her anywhere.

There’s the brief warmth of her hand at his back, then the rustle of her uniform at his side. Ichigo looks down, and Rukia’s bare hands are pale and vulnerable in the night, the strength in them surprising as she tangles her fingers with his.

This is the first time, Ichigo realizes, that they have ever touched like this—deliberate and slow and seven years too late.

Yet somehow, the weight of their intertwined hands is the most familiar thing in the world. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Basically absolutely nobody in this fic is happy, least of all Ichigo. If he seems like an absentminded father though (because I know I'll get questions about this otherwise), that's only because of the fact that his world has just been turned upside down.


	9. Chapter 9

 

_Six years ago._

Orihime is distracted the entire time they’re together. Today had been their customary once-every-other-week date, and Ichigo had first taken her to see some popular western romantic comedy, and then to a quick dinner at their usual restaurant next door.

Ichigo attributes his girlfriend’s silence to the demands of university exams, and follows suit. They’re almost done with their meal when she looks up from her soggy bowl of kakiage and says, “Ichigo.”

Even after nearly a year of dating, Orihime rarely calls him by his first name. The way she says it now, it reminds him of the night she’d stood in front of her hollowfied brother; it’s a tone of voice that won’t be ignored.

“Yeah?”

Her expression is inscrutable, and not for the first time Ichigo thinks he’s getting a glimpse of an Inoue Orihime that he rarely ever sees.

 

*

 

Ichigo thinks he must have blacked out for a second, because there’s no way she’d just said—

“You’re—?”

The will he’d glimpsed earlier flees, and Orihime’s eyes drop to her hands and the napkin fisted between them.

“D-Don’t worry Kurosaki-kun...I won’t ask anything of you.”

There’s a dull roaring in his ears and a heavy buzzing in his hands, and Ichigo feels like half of him is trying to dissociate out of his body while the other half is screaming _not like this, not yet, this wasn’t part of the fucking narrative_ like he was ever really in control of his life in the first place—

“Oh,” Ichigo manages.

Orihime doesn’t look up from her hands, so Ichigo focuses on them too, on her fingers methodically tearing the flimsy paper napkin to shreds.

 _Oh_.

 _This isn’t cowardice,_ Ichigo tells himself. Then: _C_ _ourage_.

Later, he’ll ask her to marry him; later, she’ll say yes. Later, later, later, he’ll quietly tell Karin and Yuzu. And the entire time, the entire time _courage_ will toll keenly through his head like a mourning knell. 

 


	10. Chapter 10

 

Isshin says, “In the beginning, she looked after you every day.”

Afterwards, Ichigo realizes what his father had meant.

 

*

 

He forces himself to imagine:

Rukia’s expression the morning he’d gotten rid of her seat in class; her eyes as he’d hurled the substitute shinigami badge into the Karakura River.

Then, the line of her mouth as she’d watched him walk away from her, and everything they’d shared.

Had she seen him as he called Orihime’s name? As he turned away one last time?

 

*

 

A second realization: It hadn’t been the first time Rukia had seen his eyes empty themselves of her.

Yet here she is, still looking at him like he hasn’t already disappointed her in the worst of ways.

 

*

 

Ichigo thought he’d been amassing armor—a safety suit built on the pretenses of normalcy.

In reality he’d shackled his ankles to rocks, had let the weight drag him down; he’d touched the ocean floor and thought it land.

  
*

 

i thought to pick

the flower of forgetting

for myself,

but i found it

already growing in his heart.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Basically any poetry in this collection comes from either Izumi Shikibu or Ono no Komachi; this time it's Izumi Shikibu again. Thank you for reading!


	11. Chapter 11

 

Orihime and Ichigo sit side by side on their couch and watch as Isshin and Yuzu fuss over a bemused Kazui in the middle of the living room floor. They’d dragged out some of the kid’s old toys and had spent the past fifteen minutes trying to convince the boy to play along. Karin sits in the armchair on the other side of the room, arms crossed and expression hard.

Rukia had left for Soul Society a while earlier. She’d promised that she’d be back in the morning.

There’s a soft touch at his shoulder, and Ichigo starts. Orihime looks at him, and when he meets her eyes she curls her fingers tightly around his arm.

“Are we…Is everything okay?”

Ichigo can almost hear the uncertain _Kurosaki-kun_ that used to always follow.

The smile he gives his wife is practiced; familiar only because he’s worn it so many times over the years.

“Yeah.”

Orihime’s hand slides soundlessly from his shoulder as Ichigo stands and mentally prepares himself for wrangling Kazui from his father. He can feel her eyes on him the entire way. 

Despite everything, he hates hurting her—he always has—but here he is doing it anyways.

Because for all Orihime is a mystery to him, she has always been able to read Ichigo much too well. And they both know he’s lying.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry updates have been so slow! I've apparently sacrificed my life to Miraculous Ladybug.


	12. Chapter 12

“Did you think this was going to be easy?”  
  
Papers scattered across the floor: receipts, half-graded tests, fanciful recipes.

Pieces of a life that has no room for him.

“Did you think I ever really believed you?”

A soft whisper in the dusk darkened room, gently delivered. It twists like a knife in his side. Makes a home next to the ever-present guilt.

In the next room, their son sleeps.


	13. Chapter 13

_Earlier_.

“You’re not staying.”

Rukia pauses with one foot on the threshold. Beyond the half-open door, Ichigo can hear Kazui’s happy squeals.

“You never got a gigai,” he explains, hands stuffed in his pockets.

She turns to face him, “Ichigo—”

“No,” he interrupts, “it’s okay, I get it. Important vice captain stuff and all that—”

Rukia stops him with a hand on his chest.

“No,” she says, and her expression is immeasurably sad in the half-light. “You of all people should know that if, if there was, if there’d been—”

She takes a deep breath, her fingers clenching against the fabric of his shirt. His heart stops and starts in time in response.

“I would stay, if I could.”

Ichigo says nothing, because as usual Rukia is right. He knows, and even if he doesn’t, her unguarded eyes give everything away.

Kuchiki Rukia has never lied to Kurosaki Ichigo.

A selfish part of him almost wishes that she would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I first stumbled onto the poem I used for the title, it'd been part of a prompt on 31-days. I didn't receive the physical copy of the book until well after I'd started the fic, and it wasn't until then that I realized that the prompt--and by extension I--had gotten the line wrong. It should be _through worlds/worlds_. Apologies!


	14. Chapter 14

“Inoue-san,” Ishida says in greeting, head bent as he finishes signing some requisition forms. Even upside down, the header is still familiar enough for Orihime to recognize.

She only has to wait another moment before Ishida’s pushing his chair back to politely stand. She presses her lips into a thin line, and hides the sharp smile; he’s still so quietly gallant, even after all these years.

“Why didn’t you come?”

Ishida pauses, one hand slowly and deliberately rubbing the bridge of his nose. Orihime recognizes that too: his way of stalling for the right words.

“I didn’t think it was my place. If Urahara had needed to see me, I’m sure he would have sent word.”

His lie hurts, if only because they’re usually so rare. Ishida seldom ever lies to Orihime, and never for her benefit; he has never thought her too weak to handle any truth.

Her voice, when she finally speaks, is high and reedy; she sounds lost—she sounds fifteen again. Orihime hates it, but she can’t help it all the same.  
  


***  
**

She says, “I needed you.”


End file.
